Monthly Expert Bio - Gareth Hoyle - Marketing Signals

VIDEO: 64:26 mins

AUTHOR mins: Robert Craven and Gareth Hoyle

In this GYDA Talks, Robert talks to Gareth Hoyle of Marketing Signals. Straight from university, Gareth started his own digital marketing agency from which Marketing Signals has grown. A commercial mind with a deep technical understanding, he conveys comprehensive digital marketing knowledge in a straightforward and easily understandable way to stakeholders at all levels. An investor in people.

Robert and Gareth discuss:

• How is your agency different? Why do people buy from you?

• Are there secrets of success? What do you need to do to grow an agency?

• How did you respond to COVID-19?

• You refer to the ‘bull***t’ that goes with the models of running an agency – why?

• Is the agency model dead?

• Is it a hamster wheel or a flywheel?

• Are agencies short-changing clients?

• Why don’t clients in-house more agency services… or go to Bangalore…?

• Recommendations/pearls of wisdom, golden nuggets.

Transcription:

Robert Craven  00:48

Hello, and welcome to the guider grow your digital agency initiative talks and today I'm absolutely delighted to have with me the wonderful Mr. Gareth Hoyle.

Gareth Hoyle  00:59

Thank you. Good. Good to be here. To be honest with your art. It's It's been a while we've discussed it a few times about getting the art. So here we are, it only took a second lockdown.

Robert Craven  01:08

The second lockdown, it's great to have you on board. And so people will probably know you, Gareth from Sydney on stage in anywhere in the world. And just tell us if those of you who don't know who Gareth hire there's tell us a little bit about about who you are and what you do.

Gareth Hoyle  01:30

Yeah, so I've been running agencies or digital businesses, should we say for 15 years now? quite successfully, I would argue I've worked in product and service. So I've built up and exited a software business. I've built up broken bill up how heartbroken by Google and built up digital agencies over the years. There was a there was a point where I was quite infamous for completing the wheel, shall we say, as I built a lot of links and introduced the link removal tool. Now I build links again, probably quite well known for as long as Robert has been on stage, but not also not just speaking but also presenting. So I own more tuxedos and I do suits. And hopefully I'd like to think that I am quite well known in the industry has been a safe pair of hands. And I certainly deliver what we say we're going to what we're going to deliver.

Robert Craven  02:25

So a safe pair of hands for what what in this great thing we call digital marketing. Where is the bit that Gareth Hoyle kind of focuses?

Gareth Hoyle  02:34

Yeah. I think as an agency we focus on on search. So PPC, and SEO, I think for what were probably the most world famous for if you aren't a big fan of the phrase, but what are the most well known for to say renow link building? Rarely, so they're the that dirty, horrible side of SEO that nobody likes to talk about. But everyone does. Let's be honest.

Robert Craven  03:00

So so the question has to be, you know, what makes you different from the rest? Why should people come to you when they can go to so many other people?

Gareth Hoyle  03:09

Yeah, valid point, there are certainly more entrants in the linkbuilding market now than there ever has been. I think part of that is Google's fault for not updating the link based algorithms for a while. So a lot of people are seeing too good a result from links. In terms of what makes us different. Experience trust, links are still a very important part of SEO, but it's also the easiest part to get wrong. Therefore, I do think that you should choose your your legally partners more. As an agency, we were commercial nerds, we don't have a sales person, there's 20 of us, we we try and consider ourselves more as a trading partner with our clients rather than an agency trying to sell you an extra five hours a month. I I believe that the big isn't best, which is something that we we speak about quite a lot, Rob. We are a team of 20 at the moment, and it's probably five more than I'd want to be. I would rather be there I guess we pick our customers as much as they pick ups, which is quite a nice position to be in. And I think that comes down to again, the trading partner rather than an agency This isn't you're buying 10 hours and we'll we'll complete X if we're going to be working with so we only have 15 brands that we work with at any one time. And if we're running all the SEO and all the PPC for that brand and we kind of have to believe in it. Whilst we won't drink all the Kool Aid you have to believe in their fundamental values and we have to market their business. So I think by only taking on work that we believe in kind of helps us stand out we we get many a shocked face when we refuse work. And that's just the way we've always been for 15 years. And that's the way it will be for the, hopefully I'm not running it, but for the next 15 years, but I do think there's things like that. And again, we don't have salespeople. So the downside to that is quite often the clients are stuck with myself before I hand it over to the talented team. But then we focus on just being the best at what we do rather than chasing money. So that's, I think that's some of the things that make us stand out, as they think the fact that I'm two metres tall, 100 kilos, and quite an extrovert and an introverted world probably helps a little bit.

Robert Craven  05:35

But I remember you saying to me that the prop, the problem was the problem is locked down. Yeah, is that most of your business took place in the bar without being your district. But it was actually just a socialising and networking was the most effective.

Gareth Hoyle  05:53

Yeah, after.

Robert Craven  05:56

I've grown the business so. So it's, it's, it's fair to say as an outsider giving you constructive feedback that that people remember meeting Gareth Hoyle, and that that I was thinking about this last night. The personality type of most agency owners is not extrovert, is not loud, is not opinionated, but is definitely.

Gareth Hoyle  06:23

Get attacked by a dog in the background. Locked down life will work for.

Robert Craven  06:32

That's fine. The majority of agency owners are, are quite timid folk, they're not out there. And I think that one of the things about you, everyone knows, everyone knows you, once they've met you, they don't forget you because you are larger than life and you tell things I say are and so on and so forth. So I guess that I mean, your business without Gareth Harlan, it would not be would not be hard to be a business, it's that'd be fair to say.

Gareth Hoyle  07:00

I think it would be more of a business now than it ever has been. It's something that I've been working on for the last few years. And I think that you'll probably find that 90% of the agencies are in are in a similar boat where it is the leader driving sales, and especially the under 25 members of staff, I think the is a fundamental flaw of most small businesses in the, yeah, people are buying into the dream that I'm selling, if you like I have a last couple years I have been working hard to try and remove myself as the as the face of the business is difficult because we don't, we've tried taken on salespeople, but the short termism in their mindset really, really bothered me to the point where we decided that no, we're just going to not have salespeople. And we'll muddle our way through it the way that we have done forever. I also think I'm so I'm 40 this week, I think I've got a few I think I've got a few years of work left in me yet. I don't necessarily want to be at the coalface for the next 20 years. But if I was gonna go down the process of trying to exit my business or find a buyer or, or be strategically acquired, which is what I think is more likely to happen to a company like market signals, then I would like to think that some of the value would come from the fact that that I would be working there to a certain point, the the idea would be, for me, in terms of what I would be looking for is to be part of, I think, I kind of feel like I'm ready for something a bit bigger. Well, I suppose I've learned over the years is I'm not hiring manager. I'm not very good at HR in general, I probably better delegate in some of the softer tasks to people that are have better softer skills than me, shall we say, quite abrupt at times, as I'm sure many people will attest to. And, and at the moment, I kind of feel like where we've our current turnover, and profit, etc. I don't have the resource to take on a hiring manager to take on all these wonderful skills that it would be amazing to have at my disposal, that that I just can't afford to take on myself. So I think that would be quite appealing to that what would my role be? I don't know. Would I just be the sales director? Would I be very good at reporting into someone? Well, that's that's that's.

Robert Craven  09:54

That's a really common use a really common story. Maybe not, not maybe because if you're larger than life nice, it's all exaggerated a bit. But it's, but it's the same thing for everyone, which is kind of goes from, you know, the kitchen table to the dining room table to the garage, and then we've got an office and now I employ 10. And now employ 20. And what I used to love, which was, you know, being on a laptop and being pretty good at sales, suddenly, my job is, you know, managing director with a board of directors and making people do stuff. And it's, it's not a journey that everyone, everyone everyone makes smoothly, you know, because when you're on your own, you can do your own thing, and you make all the money now suddenly you're dependent on other people customer facing, and, and kind of kind of kind of all that stuff. Which kind of brings me to yeah, I'd be really interested to understand what do you well use the word agency for now? I'm sure I'm sure that'll fall apart for the end of the interview. But what do you think is required to get an agency not just up and going, but growing? What do you think of that? Is it the same as any other business? Or is there something unique about the agency world that we're in?

Gareth Hoyle  11:07

Yeah, I mean, we are. So we are marketers alike, by by default. We should be okay, at marketing our own businesses. And I agree that like my website isn't right. I think our most traffic to organic search, that's our website is something to do with Hootsuite. We don't even care what we rank for. We don't do any paid ads ourselves. So it's a funny, funny place to be. So again, secrets to success, what do I think we need to grow an agency always be selling doesn't matter. I mean, I we were speaking before about, we're kind of nearly at capacity at the moment and whether we're hiring. But that doesn't mean I'm going to stop selling because tomorrow customer could serve us notice. Tomorrow, an opportunity to hire two new members of staff that can add some real value to our business may arise. So I need to make sure I've got pipeline come in to keep them busy. I also from from an from a business owners point of view, one thing that I have done over the last couple of years, is I massively value reading and thinking time. So actually just turning your phone off. I went from book to Kindle, I'm now back to book because although Kindle doesn't have distracting icons and stuff, if I'm on a Kindle, I've got my phone in my hand that pick my phone up and start reading a book, my inbox starts going my slack starts going. Whereas I find that if I just leave my phone on my desk and go and sit with a book on a chair I come up with, I think they're quite good. I'm sure my team would argue against that. But I do think that it's it's very easy to so life is tiring. Work is tiring. Burnout sucks, I burnt out, I burnt out probably 2013, 2014. When I made some pretty shitty decisions at work that didn't work out, we nearly lost the business, some stuff going on in my personal life that just affected everything that I was doing. And rest every now and again, I guess everybody seems to think that the route to success is 15 hour days, I would argue that route to success is seven hour days, and then go and manage that balance between keeping your either wife or two children. They need keep it happy. I have a business of 16 children they need keep it happy. It's you can't do everything at once. So I used to think that working hard meant success. And working smart equals success. In my opinion these days.

Robert Craven  13:59

I've just I've just rediscovered I've always known it I've always just this whole 80/20 idea of really of eliminating which now gets translated into the word detox. And also just doing doing the stuff that really works. And if it doesn't work, just just just scrap it. And I've been on bit of a bit of a digital detox, which has been awesome. So I've taken taken Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and Instagram off my mobile phone. It's given me an extra 45 minutes a day quite easily and committed to about 15 minutes of you could call it meditation or just rest or just reflection before I do anything in the morning. Which just kind of gets you in order and take and take shape of it. Because otherwise we become totally addicted to work. I think it's a fallacy this whole we both know someone who loves it. This emailing each other tech seeing each other at four o'clock in the morning I'm up and working. Yeah, I'm on my I'm on my power treadmill. I'm doing my first hours work. I think this comes from some weird idea that several high performing possibly sad no social life, obsessives do this stuff. It doesn't mean that ordinary folk like you and I need to be up at four o'clock in the morning and working 18 hour days.

Gareth Hoyle  15:27

I'm definitely not, I can promise you now I need the still awake for the night before door awake in the morning, I would say 99.9% of days I would sleep but I mean, I think part of it comes from like, for me attending work is work like attendance is like the the minimum expectation. And what I think that we've done during the lockdown period is try to move some of our measurements about stuff output away from turning up doing your aid or for tensile sex, whatever, whatever frequency you choose to have your eight hours, but actually measuring them on have you done those 15 tasks that we gave you this month, have they been done to a above 90% expected standard one that was perfect, we don't expect every work done 100%. So if we start to think more along the lines of measuring output rather than attended. And I appreciate that some of it is difficult to do that, especially in a creative sector where think creative doesn't work, but I can't sit you in a room and say give me some ideas, I need to just leave you alone. But then measure it over a longer period of time in that in that lane, the last four weeks has that employee hit that target. And to a certain degree, I don't mind. So we're now 100% remote, we are going to keep a small office where we've sublet half of our office space already. I'm not sure if the licences signed on that. Now let's hope they do before this like that stuff comes in that I don't mind when my team do the work, as long as they don't do too much work because that goes back to the balance. So overtime is bad. I will place I know how much work my team have got up. If you're having to work late, you're messing around in the deck. I know what works on I know how and I don't give out tasks that I couldn't complete myself.

Robert Craven  17:42

But that means, you know, when you give someone out of a one hour unit of work for what for one to a better phrase, you know, because you've done something like it before that it should be one hour.

Gareth Hoyle  17:55

And I know I'll be able to do it 40 minutes, but I'll give them an hour.

Robert Craven  17:58

So what happens when you when you're when you're when you're divvying out work that, that maybe you don't quite understand like shooting a video or? Or something slightly wider or the mark? Or do you just just you just distribute stuff what you know.

Gareth Hoyle  18:15

Yeah, there will be incidents where we do take our work where it's difficult to measure a black and white output. Luckily, I suppose with our business model, people do tend to buy X amount of links or X amount of articles for want of a better word or blog posts or sales pages or E-commerce category content. So it does become easier to measure like that. I also believe that even with a complicated task, once it's broken down to its core components, you can start to measure what needs to do in at any any point, what we try and stress to people and because I believe with managing with a carrot rather than a stick is dependencies and you're not letting me down, you're letting your colleague down. And I find that that kind of makes them take a little bit more ownership. And we can't have that sat here doing nothing because James hasn't done his job. So the pressure is on James to to do his job on time. And if there's a problem, then obviously we give them the support network to to ask for help. But there's yeah, there's I think the the other thing in terms of going back to original question, what do we need to do to grow an agency? So I think you need a bit of luck if I'm honest. And look when you're hiring because people are we are still people by not people. I still market to marketing departments, not to machines. I think you need luck with pitching. We've always managed to sort of pitch above above our station, I think would be fair to say to say and I think Rob you know some of our clients, I think we would agree that we probably pitch slightly above our stage. sure most of the time, but because we have a history of delivery, I think we get through. I also think that to grow your agency, what a lot of owners rarely, rarely do need to understand is is what makes them stand out. And let me give you a clue. It's not that your award winning, it really isn't. You're also not data driven. Because if you're not driving by data, you're guessing. I don't know that. They are the two things. So I got the due diligence thing that we'll talk about in a minute. But I help brands, source agencies just be the word where he just doesn't look, it's great for the team morale, it's great for a day out, you get to you know, I bought some special shiny trainers for for my next job. So you know, wearing is a great night out. But it's not a differentiator in agency life, to be honest.

Robert Craven  20:53

From that we did it we did. My colleague Ganesh did a piece of research for about 200 agencies looked at all their websites. And it came down to about five or six phrases that everyone uses, which are award winning customer focused, delivering awesome value for money. Like, do you cheaper, and then every image is either people climbing ladders, or pulling rope or climbing trees or whatever it is, and to say and to say, what makes us really unique is it can't tell what makes you unique. Our commitment to customer service. Really, really isn't that was kind of kind of gets us on to in our little email before this, this conversation. We talked about the bullshit that goes with the models of running an agency. So that was this is really interesting, because because there's always every year there's an article called The agency is dead, long live the agency or something similar, it's not not very original title. But we've definitely got a world where springing up our our people, quite rightly challenging the model of an agency that they use pre COVID, you know, so we've kind of discussed 2020 is different from 2019. And 2021 ain't going to be like 2019. But on steroids, it's going to be a different world. And I see a new theme. We know we know, several agencies together. That that it seems to me that there's been this golden opportunity of repositioning, redesigning, refocusing an agency, even more importantly, thinking about what that is, does a customer want, because customers don't wake up and say the one thing I need more of right now is more links. That's not That's not how customers wake up. And this has been a golden opportunity for people to not try and get back to business as usual. But actually look at what customers really want. Do they really want an agency? Do they really want 100 person agency with the awards and the accolades, and so on and so forth? What is it the clients really want from us, for me, what makes us different from the rest? So I've been trained to know, for you to expand on your phrase, the bullshit to go for the agency.

Gareth Hoyle  23:19

First of all, I love my job. I do. I mean, I love to hate it, though, since I'm sure my wife who sees me at the worst of times when we've just lost a big client, who also sees me at the best of times when I come in with a bottle of champagne, and we've got a client. So first of all, I do accept that but the agency life is bullshit. But you know what, it's my bullshit. So it's the bullshit that I've used to, I suppose. I think more than anything is that hamster wheels have contracts of you do a good job for someone that next year they want more for less and then you have to renegotiate. And I think a lot of the time the customers don't know what they're looking for a new server is the missing piece of the puzzle where there's an education an education plate put in to the market for brand owners or marketing managers that probably don't know what they want and are are baffled by agency bullshit. People cut again from from a hiring perspective, I made a really bad hire this summer. That ended up costing me an 84,000 pound a year fee clients that's not revenue that's fees. So that really, you know what you could have got me on a bad day when I gave you the title of the agency bubbly ship. Just found out about that, that it's, it's all bullshit. Anyway, it looks like it will get flagged.

Robert Craven  24:41

Interesting because you describe it as a hamster wheel. And I think that HubSpot describe it as a flywheel. In other words, their argument would be you do great work, which means that your your conversion rate increases, which means you're able to do great work, which means your conversion rate increases. And then it happily ever after. Now, that's not that's clear. That's the ideal world with a magic wand and everything's sparkly. And I think you're probably right, it is more of a hamster wheel, that something falls off the edge, you're not able to catch it, you go and reach it. And something else goes, we've always got, we've always got people, but also, I think there's a, there's a sense that, that, that if, if I'm a brand manager, and I've got a marketing director, and I've got a team of 15 people, I can get, I can get an intern in for 8000 pounds a year, I can get five in terms of for what I'm giving you guys, you know, and and and if I just find some course on HubSpot, or something that would tell them what to do, I can have it all in house all in control. And therefore I wouldn't have to go to an agency because going to an agency means as marketing director, I then talk to my head of head of marketing or my marketing manager, a marketing manager, then talks to your product manager head off or whatever it is, who then talk to your you know, person with a computer in front of them. Who then does the work who don't go back. I mean, it does kind of feel that that the agency is a middleman putting in additional, additional moving parts, which mean that more can go wrong. Does that fair to say?

Gareth Hoyle  26:36

Yeah, the first thing that I would do there is I'd walk away from that client. I know that sounds terrible, but I'm privileged enough to select our customers as much as they select us. And that that will never change in as long as I'm at the top of the market and signals tray. We're never going to say we as we came out of lockdown we we cancelled the contracts that were up for renewal of 10,000 pound a month in revenue because they furloughed us if you like over over locked down and you know what? We actually really enjoyed not working with them. So let's not work with them. We got a few again surprising responses of are you fucking kidding me, too? Oh, wow. Didn't didn't see that coming early. The the HubSpot flywheel thing. I mean, I don't live in a textbook, I'm afraid. It's the biggest problem with the agency model is the people that we've done work in in agencies, that people that work in clients, where I hope, and I, you know, this is a hope, I don't know that we're going to be successful by taking this approach in the future. But I certainly hope that I've made the right chess play is that I believe more and more in housing will go out of general work, let's no point you pay me 150 quid an hour or pay my agency 150 quid an hour to do meta description of dating or other SEO labour jobs. But what we are seeing is great demand for our more specialist services. So whether it's producing internal link strategies, which might be slightly above the in house team, in terms of strategizing, but not even on the radar of the marketing director, he was all of a sudden got to deal with 15 people living into bed flats, working off dining tables, and who knows where his team ended up. So I think that there is still where I hope we stand out is that we are very, very, very good at two or three very, very, very narrow things. We're not a generic, we're not trying to be our website at the moment pisses me off. To be honest, I nearly deleted it the other day, it just got hold the page that says do website for banks, it just doesn't reflect what we just don't really want to tell. And we are recruiting a developer or designer, so good to see the guys there. I just I do believe that, that that by specialising and adding value in places where it's a pain to hire for the brands. So whilst I'm not going to give away all of my sales strategies, I am quite happy to mention this one. Where we've always done incredibly well is E-commerce brands that are based around ringroad of cities, so they're just basically big warehouses, whether it's in Trafford Park in Manchester, or it's on the M 25 in London, but these places are good, solid, sustainable business. He says with a great product, good margin got money to invest in marketing, but they just can't attract the talent to their industrial estate for want of a better word. Most of my colleagues that I know that work in digital marketing, not all of them, don't really want a bacon and egg butting with the builders for being here, for their lunch, they'd rather have Halevi fries and sweet chilli dead, which you get in city centres or in town sector generalisation here, but let's just go with it. Whereas what we've always managed to offer is that trading partner rather than the agency that we can come in, and we can help that strategize what they should be outsourcing and what they should be in sourcing, we can start to look at their procurement teams and what their processes are, and make sure that the marketing is actually acting upon what the procurement team are telling the marketing director. And I think once you start to take that approach, rather than do you want to buy 10 hours for 100 quid an hour, give me your money, and we'll do as little as possible. Once you get beyond that, that it's not a traditional agency relationship. It's it's it's just a partnership, like we've even some of our customers now, with we're trying to and again, it takes trust to get to this position. Pay me a commission on the sales that we generate. I'll take the risk with you. Like, why should you keep once once we've got a history, so I know that you're gonna pay your bills on time. And I know that if it's lead gen, your sales team are idiots, because there's no point me getting the leads. And if you're not ringing them for three days, once I've got that, that confidence in my clients business, why on earth wouldn't we go as being a almost a commission paid sales team that run the digital market by... So you put skin in the game? I love it. I love the number of times when I say your WHY would you as a client of the client, I want you to have skin in the game, I want you I want you to work really, really hard. Because if you don't give me what I want, then you don't get paid. And this whole thing drives me bonkers about some agencies, but we've done the work we have to work with rubbish. There's just no good get paid. I mean, I mean, create a hybrid model where 50% of your fears, some kind of retainer, and the other 50% is based on on high performance. But but the idea that, Oh clients clients need to recognise we've invested time? Well, well, yeah. But on the other hand, you know, you're, you're the dingbat, who said that you could create my piece of software or website in 500 hours, and it's taking you 1000 hours, and I don't think as a client, I should be paying for your inability to be able to know how much time you're gonna put into something. So give me a fixed price. Or give. So, so yeah, so I, I'm totally with you. So simple answer to the question. Is the agency model dead? Yes or No? No. Okay. It's just changing. There's never a simple answer. It's just just changing. It just depends. Okay, so, absolutely.

Robert Craven  33:25

Um, many agencies shortchanging their clients?

Gareth Hoyle  33:30

Well, I don't want to back myself into a corner with a lot of my friends that run agencies and most of my friends that run agencies aren't shortchanging clients. I think the biggest problem is agents. The brands don't know what they're buying or what they need to buy. And I genuinely believe that is fundamentally the issue with the majority of agency client falling out is the wrong thing.

Robert Craven  34:00

Okay, so there's two examples, which I think we'll just bring in very, very quickly. So the first one is, is John Redman modo25 in Leeds, and, and he flipped the agency. I'll give you three examples. He has flipped the agency model. So that he actually helps brands to in house so he still sells the brain power, he still sells the the strategic piece, he still sells the director to director stuff. But what he's done is he's taken the, the keyboard monkeys for want of a better phrase, and just help the help that the client buys. And that's one example. Second example is a guy who has come out of a large agency. And what he's done is he's put a really good diagnostic tool, which will help clients understand what they really need, how good what they've got is and what they really need. And then he's got a team of freelancers behind that. Do we'll respond to the needs within within that within that piece. And I think that those those kinds of models kind of are really appealing to the to the client. I'm not saying I'm not saying it's right. But I mean, from the client's point of view, they can send the stuff off to Bangalore, they can send this stuff off, they can do it in house, they can send they can, they got, they got a whole whole number of choices. And I think part of what's wrong is because every agency says we are, we are award winning. And what we really came out of delivering offer value for money is that and it feels like a really commoditized product. What sorts out the great agencies from the rubbish agencies, the great agencies are really good at marketing, maybe there's no mention of how good they are delivery.

Gareth Hoyle  35:56

Yeah, the delivery is what makes the difference, I believe?

Robert Craven  36:01

Well, the trouble is, I can only have one agency at a time in effect. So I don't know, I don't know whether your agency is delivering awesome value for money. And unless somehow, you're able to demonstrate that to me, when some other agency rocks up. With some kind of attractive salesperson, I may go, oh, maybe I'll move on. So unless we're able to demonstrate the great value we're giving our clients then there's just a likelihood that people need to wander off.

Gareth Hoyle  36:36

It. So we always speak to our clients in a commercial in a commercially focused way. So we're not designers, you're not paying us to make pretty videos that we can then we can put on YouTube, and you can share on Instagram. And the easiest way of measuring your digital marketing agency is to look at the tail, to be honest, right? If there's, if there's not an abundance of PayPal payments, not really money anymore, is that there's not an abundance of payment received emails, maybe with the wrong agency, if there, I mean, I still think that a lot of it comes back to soft skills. As much as we all wear our hoodies and our headphones, sit in the dark and get on with our coded. But we still have to speak to each other once a week, once a day. I believe and I know that I do this upstream. I buy off people that I like, and if I'm going to give you my money, then I'd at least want to know that I at least want to be happy that you're spending back. But rather than be grudgingly paying your invoice every month. And I think that the agency should think that the I think with a data is the new oil and all that kind of discussion. Why wouldn't you want to keep more control over over that, like the certainly typical example of agency, grand friction. We're working. This is all theoretical. So when I say we, this isn't actually true, by the way, people were working with a company they serve us now. So I go file, download AdWords comm download download Google ads campaign, I then run a custom audience of other people in your industry telling them that I've got six years worth of data for your PPC campaigns, do you want to buy that spreadsheet? Well, that's eliminated all its risk mitigated, because obviously, you can't stop an employee stealing it. And please risk mitigated by keeping that data within your own walled garden. So and then pulling in external resource that specialise in certain areas where you don't need to give them the keys for the castle, but you might just need to give them a section of that data and that they can work with. I don't know the model isn't that because people still need help. But as long as I know, 5% more than the average but I'll probably have a job in digital market. What we do will change I think, I think there'll be less of like say here's the keys to the castle go make me some money. And more of: Hi, I'm Paul, the E-commerce director, I need to do this, this and this in house this this and this is an outsourced service. But what I really want is an independent Digital Marketer that's external and my in house team external of my in house a my in house agencies that just make sure that I'm buying the right stuff and measuring the right stuff as well really.

Robert Craven  39:41

That stuff getting really interesting. So that's in the same way that I was referring to this. This new agency that has this really neat piece of diagnostic appears to have this really neat piece of diagnostic and before this call, I was going through with my my marketing director. I want to know how much we spend cost of customer acquisition and lifetime value cost of leads, again, against what we're up against what we're spending with, with the agency. And I think that it's within, it's in the marketing directors interests to pimper the results to demonstrate, you know, adding value to the business, it's in the interest of the agency to pick up the numbers.

Gareth Hoyle  40:25

We'd never do anything like that.

Robert Craven  40:30

And so as the person who's writing the check, it's the idea of having an independent audit is awesome. I mean.

Gareth Hoyle  40:40

You do it with your you do it with your money. So you know that you have independent accountancy auditors that one of my friends is an auditor for EY it's got a very nice BMW, so I don't think he's on minimum wage. Therefore, he's not being billed out. Double minimum wage. So people people spend so much time looking at the wrong part of the business in my eyes. It's almost like by by auditing your accounts you're too late. Like why not audit here before it gets to the problem area here but what do I know?

Robert Craven  41:19

Yeah, having a gold plated wiring machine what my pic way anymore?

Gareth Hoyle  41:24

I think it's the tattooed on their own machine.

Robert Craven  41:31

So, so due diligence, talk to me about due diligence.

Gareth Hoyle  41:35

Yeah, well, this is a 15 years into agency life now well, and truly living in the bullshit so to speak. I, I'm naturally known as a as a as a wee 20 year old, I had a job as a social engineer extracting information from people over the phone. I just like to look under the hood stuff. I also it frustrates me when I see we lose work to agencies that we shouldn't have lost work to. There's something wrong there. They haven't done their due diligence. So my, my my semi retirement plan, I suppose is if I could offload my agency eventually. Or I think I've actually made a no actually what's going to happen to my agency as EBA we're going to be acquired, we're going to acquire or we're going to go bust I think that the three things that we live our life with IT business. So let's assume that one of those let's assume that two of those three things or one of two of those three things happen we either get acquired and are not needed anymore. Are we gonna let you decide listeners wish was 15 years it know when we kept it up once? So I, I would like to, to help people. But by the right services really adds like, say I believe that the majority of agency fallouts are, because they bought the wrong thing, or the agency specialised like if we specialise, we specialise in link building or off page SEO, if you've got a crazy JavaScript rendering, technical SEO issue, I'm probably not the right man for the job, my team could probably figure it out. But that's not what we specialise in. Yet, if you've been wined and dined by a fancy car salesman that's made you believe that that's what you need, because that's the only thing he sells, then you're buying the wrong thing, and the campaign is going to fail, and you're going to spend 100 grand of someone else's money before you really like realise it's failed. Whereas I believe that if you invest a little bit more time and money at the stage one, by the time you get to stage four, you'll be in a much better position. It's the other thing that with the due diligence that I'm hoping to get more work off, this is still a fledgling unit of oil and oil industries, shall we say, is where people are buying websites. So now when people are buying companies more and more, the websites are the domains that come with the other big part of the assets of the business. The majority of businesses that are getting sold online these days don't come with plant. They don't come with a warehouse. But what they do come with is an email list of Facebook page and Instagram account 85 domains or with different authority or doing different things. But if you ask an accountant to do that, they'll just look at the domain renewal costs and put it as few 100 quid on the balance sheet whereas you could be getting potentially 10,000 pound a month worth of organic traffic so that to me, therefore, how do we value that if we've got if we can put a revenue figure that's that domain that revenue figures been consistent for two welcome. So I can probably look at value in that as 30x, the average revenue. So different models for different different things. I just think that there's, there's a lot of accountants and lawyers out there. That's where I'm getting a lot of my leads from at the moment that are actually starting to realise that we're not experts in this area we need we need help in the same way that I go to CBK. If I had any legal issues, I go to Stuart, my account and if I have any accountancy issues, if people have any domain name purchasing issues, why can't there be a third prong of due diligence, which is valuing assets? So let's see what happens. It costs very little to launch a website and run some paid ads. So yeah, it's, I think that is, and it all comes down to this this agency model changing Rob, I think, where I also sit as a due diligence expert, alongside the marketing director, we choose where they spend their money, not necessarily on one agency, maybe there will be a role for me doing one or two days a month, making sure that people are doing the right job. I don't know who knows, this is this is the internet. I'm supposed to be flying to Thailand on Friday night anymore. Suppose we go back to Australia for a month, not anymore. I'm just grateful that I've got a job.

Robert Craven  46:25

But it is that we are in this ever changing world. And it ain't gonna be business as usual. I think. You know, I think this the world is chopped up into that kind of a censure EY world up there where the Versace suits and BMWs make what appear to be disconnected valuations and decisions about things. And as you come down the food chain to people who are actually spending their own money, you know, and I think that I think that, you know, nobody quite knows, apart from we know that, that, you know, triple your profits in six days or your money back is wrong, all that sort of silver bullet. So just just just nonsense. And I think the industry has got some serious catching up to do in terms of how, how we don't become associated with, with estate agents. And I guess my concern is, so many people have had a bad experience with a someone who just set up overnight as a digital agency, because they'd been on a Google garage course or something. And they just didn't have the depth of experience, but they were happy to take people's money.

Gareth Hoyle  47:35

That is that the agency's fault, though? Or is that the brand's fault for buying that agency service? I mean, I was a bit of scandal for us to nearly adopt, but that is that the agencies fault that.

Robert Craven  47:44

The agencies, you know, it's the same as going through a sort of car mechanic, you don't go back to the car mechanic if the car doesn't work, and you tell everyone what rubbish they were. Trouble is because we're selling a service, it's difficult to actually measure it. And because it's sold in, usually sold in nebulous terms as opposed to outputs. clients feel shortchanged. And because like accountants, you know, you don't you only normally have one agency at a time, you don't know how rubbish they are. And they'll justify well, it was COVID. And we weren't expecting Google to change the algorithm, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And lots of people go out: Okay, fine, you know, as opposed to well, shouldn't have you known about the algorithm? Shouldn't you've been on top of that? Shouldn't you've you responded within an hour of that changing rather than leaving stuff for days and days? So I think it's, I think it's a, I think anyone can set up as an agency costs of entry, or a laptop, laptop, even. Yeah, a laptop you borrowed from your mate. Anyone can set up a website, I think it's up to the good guys to really demonstrate the value that they add to their clients, and for the good guys not to create a cartel and close it down. But I think it's up to the good guys to make it clear what good work looks like and what and what and what and what you should be able to expect. And whether that's in terms of guarantees, or as you're suggesting, putting skin in the game. It shouldn't just be give us 100 pound an hour. Thank you very much. We'll take it from you.

Gareth Hoyle  49:22

I think if you help people to sell stuff, why would they? Why would they cancel the contract? Why would they look elsewhere? If if you're if you know that you're taking the client for a ride, then you know, deep down that this this train will come off the tracks eventually.

Robert Craven  49:41

But most people don't care. I mean, like the builders who did our Bartylla he was off he was gone. He had the cash and then and then the building started falling apart. You know, and I'm not a builder, so I can't look behind things and but you know.

Gareth Hoyle  49:56

So I think we could we could alter your builders online reputation. should know if we wanted to do another podcast.

Robert Craven  50:06

To destroy someone. Supplies. Yeah, so I got a plaster and I decorated it with the central heating. I've got a whole list of people. So just imagine is difficult to imagine we've been out we've been out for out for a meal a couple bottles of wine a couple of brand is I know yours is white wine in soda water, white wine and fizzy water. And sort of falling out of the restaurant at 11 o'clock midnight. Can you imagine? Can you remember that? We start wagging our fingers at each other about the thing is what people need to do? What are your, your pearls of wisdom? What are your your one liners that you give to people about running? A thriving agency?

Gareth Hoyle  50:59

Yep. So I, obviously you gave me a couple of questions before the before the call and your recommendations of wisdom. I think more than anything, keep going, like, life will get you down work is shit at times. But you know what, we're not digging holes in the road in the rain. Something will happen, like you'll be having a bad day something will happen which will reignite your passion. For me, it's when we get a good leader. And I think I'd love to work with that client, or I really believe in what they're selling. So don't just think of it as as oh, I need to get six new clients think about what sort of clients you want to work with, like what do you want to help someone sell? Because your job is like a trading partner. Like if I don't believe in what you're selling, like we don't work with payday loans, because I think it's a shitty product. So I would be terrible as an agency partner for a payday loan company. Whereas I, I collect bullion coins, I've got two clients that are that are e commerce for gold and silver coins. And I love working with the team on ideation and like what like doing the long tail of like, what would I look for? Is there a certain limited edition point is that, like you can tell the passion if you're working on the right customers. And I think that if you if you generally hate your job because of the customer, think about the past somebody in your team that has to deal with that guy every day. So I think more than if you tried pick your customers, right and work on work on campaigns and work to sell products that you actually enjoy selling while the benefit.

Robert Craven  52:35

I think you're spot on actually, because I think I think so many agency folk just lose it. They end up being the managing director with the KPIs in front of them and they become aware that they need to get 5-10 more customers this month. And it becomes commoditized everything, everything becomes commoditized. And the word that you use, although it is overused I think is reignite reignite your passion reignite your passion about the excitement and enthusiasm for what you do. And I think especially COVID times, you know, when you're in front of a blinking screen, eight hours in succession. People have lost that passion and they've lost they've lost that that enthusiasm for what they do. And they've they've just they've just so I love that phrase reignite your passion. I think that's just absolutely awesome. Brilliant. Good. I've really enjoyed that we've managed to steer away from bad language on behalf or we haven't actually don't said anything. I don't think that.

Gareth Hoyle  53:39

No editing required.

Robert Craven  53:40

Is absolutely fantastic. It's been an absolute pleasure to get an insight into your world and insight into the way you do stuff. Your agency is different. The way you approach business is different. It's refreshing. And it's been absolutely fantastic talk to you. Thank you so much for being absolutely great guest.

Gareth Hoyle  54:01

My pleasure. There are I think we've already discovered three or four other subjects. We could run podcasts on. Maybe two different audiences though, I think.

Robert Craven  54:11

Brilliant. Thank you very much indeed. That's was great. Thank you.